What is the meaning we put into these or other events?How do we explain our behavior or the behavior of loved ones? For example, why is a person angry, angry, maybe something happened? All this explains the concept of attribution. What is it and how to use it? Let's try to deal with these issues together.
Definition
Scientifically, attribution is a processin which people use certain information to draw conclusions about the causes of events or the behavior of other people. During the day, it is common for a person to draw numerous conclusions about his own behavior, as well as the thinking of others. Simply put, attribution is all those ordinary thoughts and actions of ours that have been accomplished without awareness of the underlying processes and prejudices that lead to one or another conclusion.
How it works
There are 2 types of attribution to explain the behavior.other people. First, we can explain the act of one person in relation to another. Secondly, the behavior in relation to the situation. For example, if a student behaves quietly and modestly on the first day of schooling, we can conclude that shyness is the cause of such human behavior. This is a dispositional attribution (in relation to a person). Or we can assume that the cause of shyness is a lack of sleep or a student’s personal problems (situational). So, attribution in psychology is the conclusions that people make about the causes of events and the actions of other personalities. People make them to understand and explain certain processes. And these findings, in turn, affect the interaction with others.
Examples
Attribution Types
- Interpersonal relationships.When you tell a story to a group of friends or acquaintances, you probably want to tell it as interesting and exciting as possible. What for? To your friends made a positive conclusion about you.
- Forecasting.If your car was destroyed, you can link the crime to the fact that the car was in the wrong place. As a result of this event, you will not leave the car on the same parking lot to avoid further vandalism.
- Attribution of the cause (so-called explanatory)helps us understand the world around us. Some people tend to be optimistic about events, while others tend to be more pessimistic.
Attribution Theory
She tries to explain how and why ordinary people draw certain conclusions, as well as how they explain events and their causes.
one.Fritz Haider (1958) believed that people are naive psychologists trying to understand the social world, they tend to see causal relationships even where there are none. However, the scientist nevertheless advanced two main theories on the appearance of attribution:
- when we explain the behavior of others, we try to build on internal attributions, such as personality traits, for example, we associate a person’s behavior with his naivety or reliability;
- when we try to explain our own behavior, we tend to build on external (situational) attributions.
2Edward Jones and Keith Davis (1965) believed that people paid special attention to deliberate behavior (as opposed to casual or thoughtless behavior). This theory explains the process of creating internal attribution. That is, in their understanding, attribution is the commission of certain actions due to the connection between the motive of human behavior and the behavior itself.
3.Harold Kelly’s covariance model (1967) is the most famous attribution theory. He developed a logical model for the evaluation of a particular action, which should be attributed to one characteristic: a person to the internal, the environment to the external. The term "covariance" means that a person has information from several sources, which he received at different times and in different situations, and therefore makes a conclusion about the observed event and its causes. Kelly believes that there are three types of causal information that have influenced our judgments:
- consensus;
- distinctiveness;
- sequence.
So, we see that two events occurat the same time, and therefore believe that one causes the other. Such an explanation of the causes of events is called nothing other than social attribution. This phenomenon each of us can observe in everyday life.
Attribution error
The fundamental error is commontype of cognitive bias in social psychology. In fact, it is focusing on internal personal characteristics to explain behavior in a particular situation, and not on external situational factors. The flip side of this error is that people tend to underestimate the role of the situation in their behavior and emphasize their own role. This, in turn, illustrates several types of cognitive abnormalities. For example, a person goes and carries full bags of products that may make it difficult for other people to go through. If a passing cyclist collides with this person, he may think that the driver is extremely ill-mannered and does not have a drop of respect for passing by. In this case, a person is not able to consider situational factors, such as the fact that his bags take up more space than he thinks, thereby forcing people to encounter him. To avoid the fundamental error of attribution, a person must put himself in the place of another and think about what he can do in the same situation.
Defensive attribution
Оборонительная гипотеза атрибуции является socio-psychological term relating to the set of beliefs belonging to the individual with the function of protecting themselves from anxiety. As a rule, defensive attributions occur in the event that a person has witnessed a catastrophe. In such situations, attributing responsibility and creating your own conclusions will depend on the severity of the outcome of the failure and the levels of personal and situational similarities between the person and the victim. An example of defensive attribution is the well-known hypothesis that "good things happen to good people, and bad things happen to bad people." Everyone believes in it because they feel vulnerable in situations that they cannot control. At the same time, this leads to the prosecution of the victim even in a tragic situation. After all, when people hear that someone died as a result of a car accident, they decide that the driver was drunk at the time of the crash, and try to convince themselves that the accident will never happen to them. However, oddly enough, some people believe that positive events happen to them more often than others, and negative ones, respectively, less often. For example, a smoker believes that he is less likely to get lung cancer than other smokers.
Application
Все вышеописанные психологические термины и theories we apply in real life. For example, the feeling of helplessness, the "writing up" of history, the image of a person, criticism and self-criticism is all a consequence of this or that type of attribution. So let's summarize. Attribution is the process of removing the cause of events or behavior due to human curiosity or in an attempt to avoid uncomfortable and sometimes dangerous situations.
